


Dangerous Kitchen Tools

by ladyshadowdrake



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Culinary AU, First Date, Fluffy, Jarvis the momma hen, M/M, Steve the comic artist, Tony the chef, bucky the meddling cupid, food pron, meet cute, no powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 03:03:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4547730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Engineering prodigy, billionaire, and heir to the Stark Industries empire, Tony Stark turned the business world on its head by opening a restuarant and burying himself in the kitchen. Years later, he covers an informal evening cooking class for his friend and fellow molecular gastronomist, Bruce Banner, where he meets famously camera-shy comic artist Steve Rogers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> For the Steve/Tony Fest Gift Exchange. My giftee (@Jarring on Tumblr) asked for a culinary AU and/or a bossy bottom!Tony. I tried to provide both! As with most of my little things, I have a giant world sketched out for this, but we'll see if the muses cooperate to make it happen.

Steve’s phone chimed and he looked up from his drafting table, pulling the pen away from the page. The clock ticked steadily toward five and he’d been hunched over the table since sometime after lunch. His low back gave an unhappy pulse as he sat upright, so Steve reluctantly set the pen aside. His latest comic was spread out around him in carefully inked pages, sticky note tabs clearly making the page numbers. All of the major shapes had been outlined and he was just going back in for the detail work and cleaning up the pencil marks, but he still had six pages to finish and only a week to do it before sending them off to his colorist.

Stepping carefully around the pages, Steve snagged his phone off the kitchen table and thumbed it on. He folded over to touch his toes, laying the phone on the tile and scrolling through the notifications. Three missed calls from Bucky and one playfully rude text warning Steve that he was coming over with a firehose if Steve didn’t peel himself away from his desk by five, several notifications on his social media sites, and one text from Bruce.

_Sorry, you guys, but I’m going to be trapped at the lab all night. My friend is going to take over class. Same place. See you next week._

“Crap,” Steve breathed with a wince. It was Thursday, which meant that he had a cooking class in… less than an hour. “Crap,” he said again, looking over at his still unfinished pages. He wanted to complete page 22 before he went to bed, but he’d promised Bucky that he would stick to the cooking classes. Cooking was something he enjoyed, but the only reason he took the class was because Bucky thought he was turning into a hermit and he needed something scheduled to get him out of the loft at least once a week.

_no need for firehoses. out of the chair. off to class in 20._

_C U there punk :P,_ Bucky responded immediately, so Steve imagined he’d been ready to go with another death threat.

Pushing the phone away, Steve braced his hands on the floor and walked himself out into downward-facing dog, peddled his feet to stretch out his calves, and then folded through his arms into upward-facing dog. The stretch on his back felt amazing after hours bent over the desk, and he went through the transition a few times, counted out fifteen push-ups, and headed for the shower.

~*~

Bruce Banner’s gourmet cooking class was held in his large studio apartment ten blocks from Steve’s much smaller studio apartment. He adjusted the strap of his bag over one shoulder and climbed the exterior stairs to the double-wide metal door. He and Bucky had been attending the classes for six months, so Steve no longer felt awkward about pushing the door open and letting himself in. The majority of the apartment was lit with low track lights that provided just enough illumination to keep from tripping over anything, but the kitchen was an island awash in beckoning gold. Clint, facing the door, saw him first and lifted his beer in greeting, prompting Bucky to turn around.

“You’re late,” Bucky chastised.

“Teacher isn’t here, so I’m safe,” Steve replied with a laugh.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “At least I didn’t have to let you in through the window this time.”

Looking in between them, Clint asked, “Window?”

Steve groaned, but Bucky lit up. He set his beer down so he could lean on the counter and explain, “We had this asshole English teacher our first year in college. This guy would wander into class pretty much whenever the fuck he wanted, so the rule was that as long as you beat him to class, you were good. But he’d lock the door as soon as he got there.”

“Anyone who tried to come in after him would have to recite Shakespeare through the door before he would let them in,” Steve broke in, shaking his head. He’d recited “Full of Vexation Come I _,_ ” from _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ the only time he’d been locked out, and had stood in the doorway shouting the lines even after Mr. Hauser opened the door.

“So this punk,” Bucky said with a giant grin, pointing at Steve with one thumb, “Waits outside the English building until he sees Hauser coming, and just lets him walk right by. As soon as Hauser is through the door, he climbs up the outside of the building, _six freaking floors,_ and knocks on the window.”

Clint reached across Bucky to give Steve a high five, grinning brightly. It _would_ be exactly the kind of thing Clint would like. Steve’s face felt warm under the bright lights, but he smacked his palm against Clint’s.

“I scared some poor girl half to death,” Steve said. “I felt so bad.”

Bucky waved him off. “She got over it. But fuckin’ Hauser walks in, locks the goddamn door and then turns around and just freezes. Steve is sitting in the front row like he didn’t just roll through the window, and Hauser stares at him for like… a minute and a half, and then he opens the door and looks down the hallway like he’s hallucinating. Never locked the door again.”

“And you were the class hero,” Clint concluded.

“They _still_ tell stories about this guy on campus,” Bucky said, “Crusader for justice!” He made a fist with his bionic prosthetic and struck a heroic pose until Steve hip checked him right out of the kitchen. He stumbled down the stair that separated the kitchen from the living room while Clint laughed.

“He just really irritated me. I hate bullies,” Steve said finally.

“I always said that he was going to grow up to be superman, some kind of white knight,” Bucky said, hopping back into the kitchen and nudging his shoulder gently into Steve’s. “Was almost right.”

“Drawing superheroes and _being_ a superhero are very different.”

Bucky shrugged noncommittally, a shadow creeping into his eyes that read to Steve as easily as words flashing over his head: falling, blood, years of physical therapy and counselors. He banished the shadow like it had never been, face lighting up with a smile that Clint would probably never realize was a ghost compared to his glowing grins before he joined the Rangers. Bucky climbed back onto his stool and twisted the top off a chilled Angry Amel Dunkelweizen. He handed the bottle over by the neck, and then grabbed his own so they could clink the edges together, turning to tap Clint’s bottle just as the other man was taking a drink. Clint choked on the beer and reached for a napkin. He crumpled it up and threw it at Bucky’s face once he’d soaked up the spilled beer, both of them laughing. The door opened again and Steve twisted with the beer held to his lips as Donald and Jane walked in with Darcy clattering up the stairs behind them.

“Heya, Thor,” Clint greeted, getting a laugh from Darcy and Jane, and a smug smile from Dr. Blake, who apparently lived in the gym when wasn’t at an operating table.

“Little bird,” Thor responded, inclining his head with smirk firmly in place. Clint stuck his tongue out and opened his arms for Darcy. Thor dropped all three of the bags at the bar and reached out to pound Steve on the back as he slung an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “How fares your evening, my friends?” he boomed.

Thor was ridiculous, but his personality was so bright and infectious that Steve couldn’t help but like him. He’d learned over the months of interaction that Thor wasn’t going to let him go until Steve responded to his particular brand of physical affection, so he patted him on the back and squeezed his shoulder. Bucky just elbowed him in the gut, and Thor dragged him away for a bout of play wrestling that always made Steve nervous for Bruce’s expensive furniture.

Jane slid into the bar at Steve’s side with a smile. Steve leaned over the counter to grab a hard apple cider for her, and she twisted the top off with the help of her plaid shirt’s hem. “How’s the new comic coming?” she asked.

“Great,” Steve said, pulling his eyes away from Bucky, “Just a few more pages and I’ll send the second batch off to be colored. Thanks again for the help with the astrophysics.”

“Anytime,” she said, “I’m excited to see how it all turns out. I might include a few pages in my next paper.”

They shared a smile, but it wasn’t far off. As soon as he’d learned she was an astrophysicist, he’d quickly cornered her for help with the science behind his stories, and ended up with more information than he’d bargained for. _He_ could probably write a paper on string theory after their coffee dates that had quickly turned into astrophysics crash courses. After the first one, Jane moved their meetings to her lab and came prepared with diagrams and equations that Steve included in the background of his panels. The majority of readers would never know that they were looking at actual math, but a few readers would peer at his panels and recognize the equation for isotropic coordinates. They would appreciate it, and that mattered to him.

The door opened again, and an unfamiliar man in a ragged hoodie and cargo pants strolled in with a large bag slung across his back and his thumbs flying over his phone’s screen. He used his shoulder to shut the door so he wouldn’t have to take his hand off the phone, and navigated around the furniture with such ease that he was obviously familiar with the apartment.

Without looking up, he directed one forefinger at Thor and Bucky. “Feel free to break that lamp. It’s horrible and I can’t get Bruce to trash it.” He flicked his eyes at them. “Seriously, I will pay you to accidentally throw it out the window.”  When Bucky took his arm off Thor’s neck and Thor stopped punching Bucky in the side, the man just shrugged. “Your loss.”

He hopped up the step and finished whatever he was doing on his phone with a flourish. The phone went to the counter, the bag went to the floor, and he pushed the hood of his sweater back to give them a sweeping once over.

“Hi, kiddies,” he said, pulling out a dazzling smile. “I would write my name on the chalkboard, but Bruce said he would cut my fingers off if I wrote on his cabinet doors again. I’m Tony, and I will be your substitute teacher for the night. Not as cool as Brucey, but we’ll get by somehow.” He dropped his elbows to the counter and looked across the bar at them, clapping his hands together. “So…this is cozy.”

“Tony _Stark_?” Darcy after a moment of staring. 

“One and the same!” Tony said, obviously thrilled that she’d recognized him.

Darcy gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You gave a lecture to my high school culinary class about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”

“Was it good?” Tony asked curiously.

“I think you were drunk. And you told us to wear safety gear if we were going to use blow torches on our sandwiches.”

“Might have been drunk, but that’s still good advice.” Tony shrugged, unconcerned, and Steve finally recognized him. An engineering prodigy, billionaire, the heir to the Stark Industries empire, and he’d turned the business world upside-down by opening a restaurant and burying himself in the kitchen instead of going into the family business. He’d been in the textbook for the culinary class Steve took as a college elective, and his architecture instructor waxed poetic on him for half a semester.

“Are you going to teach us to make PB&J?” Darcy continued, arching an eyebrow. Steve stifled a smile, watching her. He could tell that she was awed by him, but Darcy had strange ways of showing interest.

“PB&J with a blowtorch sounds pretty fun to me,” Tony said musingly.  He tapped his hands on the counter and twisted around, looking for something. Snagging a piece of paper held to the fridge with a **_you wouldn’t like me without my coffee_** magnet, he hummed to himself. “Wow. Is this what you guys do every week?” he asked, waving the paper at them. “Chicken kiev, scallops with apple pan sauce, double chocolate mousse.” Hiking an eyebrow at them, he declared, “ _Booorring_. Feel like having some fun instead?”

“Depends on your definition of fun,” Bucky said, giving Tony a speculative look. Steve recognized the look right away and elbowed him in the ribs. When Bucky just widened his eyes and gave Steve a look of innocent confusion, Steve pointed a finger at his nose and shook his head.

“Do I need to separate you two?” Tony asked.

Bucky gave Steve a wicked smile. “Fun sounds good.”   

“Right.” Pulling a drafting pencil out of his hoodie pocket, Tony flipped the page over and jotted down a few notes. Steve peered over the counter to see what he was writing and was impressed by his penmanship. He would have expected someone as messy and flippant as Tony Stark to write like a doctor, but his handwriting was neat and tidy. He wrote in all capital letters, each one formed by precise angles and even spaces. Steve would love that quality of lettering in his comic and gave Tony a speculative look of his own.

_Arugula spaghetti, condiment pearls, invis ravioli, coconut bun, mojito_ , the list read. Tony peered at it, caught Steve looking, and dramatically snatched the paper away to hide it with his body. Steve sat back down and Bucky nudged him with two fingers. He gestured a thumb over at Tony and wiggled his eyebrows. Steve shook his head sharply and tried to give him a stern look. Bucky grinned and nodded. Steve pinched his side. Bucky batted as his hand.

“Seriously, are you two lovers or just secretly seven years old?” Tony asked curiously. Steve jerked away from Bucky and felt a flush of embarrassment like getting caught red handed with a skin mag.

“Steve _wishes_ I swung his way,” Bucky teased.

Thor leaned around Bucky to give Steve a firm slap to the shoulder. “Most would swing the direction of our fair friend.”

“I sure would,” Darcy muttered.

Ignoring them all, Steve turned his attention to Tony and asked, “What exactly are condiment pearls?”

Grinning, Tony grabbed his bag from the floor and flopped it onto the counter. “Science!” he declared, and started taking out what look like chemistry equipment. Jane made a happy noise and rushed around the island to look over the equipment, taking a canister right out of Tony’s hands and digging through the bag to come up with a handful of packets.

Tony gave her a startled look, but Thor boomed out a laugh at her giant smile and reached across the island to take one of the little packets. “Agar-agar,” he read, and then looked up at Jane questioningly.

“It’s a thickening agent,” she explained, exploring through the rest of the supplies while Tony looked on in bemusement. She rounded on Tony excitedly, holding up the packets. “These are for your condiment pearls, aren’t they? What are you using to set them? Vegetable oil, maybe? Shouldn’t it be in the freezer?”

“Do you want to teach class?” Tony asked, but he sounded sincere, his head tipped to the left while he watched her.

She recoiled, drawing the agar-agar packets to her chest, a blush staining her cheeks. “Sorry.”

Tony shrugged one shoulder and gestured to freezer with a single finger. “Want to get the vegetable oil out of the freezer? Should be ready.”

Bucky nudged him again, and Steve brushed him off, but his chest warmed despite himself as he watched Jane and Tony sort through all the equipment and ingredients. He could hear Clint and Bucky talking, the occasional interjection of Darcy’s voice or Thor’s boom, but he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation. His eyes kept getting drawn to Tony’s hands as he set out ingredients in neat rows, he and Jane moving around each other like long-time lab partners, Jane’s face lit up with excitement as the conversation shifted from molecular gastronomy to theoretical zero-point energy as an alternative power source.

“I could do it if I wanted to,” Tony said offhandedly.

“Oh, if you _wanted_ to-” Sputtering, Jane let go of a jar of mustard to make a wide gesture with both hands. Tony reached out in a flash and caught the jar with his fingertips. He juggled the jar up while Jane fumbled to save it from the floor. They both laughed as Jane unintentionally knocked it out of his hands and it skittered to the counter, unharmed.

“Success!” Tony declared and Jane covered her eyes with one hand, still laughing.

“Maybe you should be jealous, buddy,” Bucky suggested to Thor, giving Tony a calculating look.

“I am not concerned,” Thor rumbled. He nearly glowed as he watched his girlfriend, and when his eyes transferred to Tony, it was like the sun had risen on the man’s shoulder. Steve looked in between them, but he knew the feeling. Jane was brilliant, but only barely more socially aware than a houseplant. She was uncomfortable in crowds, and while she could verbally take a man out at the knees if he threatened her research, she usually closed up around strangers. That Tony made her comfortable enough to open up so quickly had to be amazing to Thor.

Bucky’s recovery had been horrible enough, but Steve had never wanted to murder anyone as much as he did those first few times in public before Bucky had gotten his prosthetic. People refusing to look at him, or, worse, looking at him with disgust or pity. Watching Bucky lose every shred of the self-confidence he’d always worn around his shoulders like a cape was heart-wrenching, and Steve had all but worshipped those few strangers who’d actually treated Bucky like he was still a person.

Giving Bucky a flirtatious wink over his shoulder, Tony noted, “Sounds like _you’re_ jealous, buddy.”

“Hey, anytime you want to come discuss quantum physics with me, just let me know,” Bucky bluffed. Steve stifled a smile, but Darcy snorted.

“What are you going to do?” Darcy asked, “Open a Wikipedia page?”

Bucky help one finger up to his lips. “ _Shhhhhh_.”

“More likely he’d just open one of Steve’s comics,” Clint corrected.

Pushing him off his stool, Bucky warned, “Stop giving away all my secrets.”

“Comics?” Tony asked, retrieving the recently-saved jar of mustard and arranging it exactly next to the ketchup. He glanced up at Steve curiously, and then tipped his head to give him a considering look. His eyebrows went up in surprise. “I thought I recognized you from somewhere.”

Startled, Steve just blinked at him. He’d been illustrating for over a decade, but it was only in the last few years that he’d started to gain any popularity. He was still shocked when anyone recognized him, even when he was standing right next to his display. “You’ve read my comic?”

Tony made a careless gesture. “Sure,” he said, but clapped his hands together before Steve could ask what he’d thought of them. “Alright everyone, grab your partners and pick a workstation. We’ll make the condiment pearls for our burgers before the vegetable oil warms up.”

Steve slipped off the barstool and claimed his usual space at one end of the island-stove, a monstrosity of twelve burners boarded on two sides by wide working spaces. He automatically rearranged the ingredients and tools the way he liked them while Bucky finished his beer at the bar and took his sweet time collecting their bags. Steve flickered a quick glance at Tony and looked away. He wanted badly to know what Tony thought of his comics, and if he’d enjoyed the work that Steve had put into making the science as realistic as possible, and what he’d liked about them – if he’d liked them all – but he didn’t know how to bring it back up with the subject changed. It was going to gnaw at him, but he’d never been good about asking for feedback in person.

“He reads your comics,” Bucky hissed in an undertone, stepping close to Steve’s side and setting their knife sets out where Steve would have put them himself, easily accessible and out of the way. Steve glared at him to shut up, but Bucky just shoved their shoulders together. “He reads your comics, and he’s hot, and he keeps staring at you.”

“Is not,” Steve muttered under his breath.

“ _Is_.”

“What are we? Five?” Steve poked him. “Leave it alone.”

Bucky nudged him again and leaned closer to his side. “Ask for his number.”

“I’m not asking _Tony Stark_ for his phone number. Put your hair up.” Steve ordered at a normal speaking volume, realizing that while the kitchen was big, but it wasn’t _that_ big, and Tony was bound to overhear them as soon as he stepped up to the island.

Bucky checked his wrists, both pockets, and patted his chest even though he wasn’t wearing a pocketed shirt. He cursed, pushing his hair back behind his ears. Steve moved to get one of the hair ties out of his gear bag, but Clint held out his arm with a roll of his eyes. He had two hair ties wrapped around his wrist, one black and one a dark purple. Bucky stuck his tongue out at Clint, but pulled the purple tie off his wrist and held it between his teeth while he gathered his hair into his hand. Steve looked in between them, feeling an unexpected and irrational spike of jealousy. Clint and Bucky worked together, they spent more time together than Steve and Bucky did these days. It made sense that they would have little things like this between them. Steve recognized how dangerous his reaction to the scene was, but he’d gotten so used to taking care of Bucky since his injury that he sometimes had to remind himself that Bucky was allowed to have other people who cared for him.

“I’ll as’th for you if you wan’,” Bucky said around the tie. He arched an eyebrow at Steve while Steve glared, took the tie out of his mouth and put his hair into a messy bun on the top of his head.

Steve was stopped from answering by Tony leaving Jane’s side to drop a pair of agar-agar packets at each station.

“These are easy,” Tony said, leaning in between Bucky and Steve to set two packets down, and then moving on to Clint and Darcy. “Quarter-cup of water, two-thirds cup mustard, one packet of the agar-agar, stir and bring to a boil. Go! Happy boiling!” He made a shooing gesture with both hands and stopped at his own burner, grabbing a deep sauce pan and leaning back to turn the burner on.

“This is like chemistry class,” Bucky observed, measuring the mustard into a glass cup and tapping it to level it out. He slid the jar across the counter to Clint, who stood ready with a flexible spatula.

Steve dumped in the water and scooped the mustard into the sauce pot. “Hopefully with fewer explosions.”

Leaning around Steve with the agar-agar, Bucky snorted a laugh. “What fun is it without explosions?”

“You two are the explosions types, hm?” Tony asked. He tipped his pot to stir the contents and peered into the living room. “Need more light over there? I know of at least one lamp in the apartment that we can happily move over to your station.”

“I like that lamp,” Clint said.

Tony pointed at him. “That’s why we’re not friends.”

“If not being friends still gets me free food at your restaurants, I’m okay with that.” Clint shrugged, grinning. Next to him, Darcy dumped the agar-agar into their pot and hipchecked him out of the way, appropriating the wooden spoon he was not stirring with.

“I keep telling my managers not to serve you, but they seem think you’re some kind of mascot or something.”

“Being cute has its perks,” Clint said smugly.

“Doesn’t hurt that you’ve got the pitiful puppy-dog eyes down,” Jane teased from her station across the island. Clint shrugged, but his grin didn’t fade in the slightest.

“Pour the mixture out into a glass dish once you’ve got it up to a boil.” Tony leaned over to peer into Jane and Thor’s pot. He made a stirring gesture with two fingers and Thor, distracted by the strange canister at their station, quickly set to stirring again. “Non-stirrers, fill up a big glass mixing bowl with cold water, and set it aside.”  

Bucky stepped away with their mixing bowl to jostle with Clint at the sink, and came back sloshing water all over the floor. Steve pulled back on the impulse to hand Bucky the spoon and clean up the mess himself, and threw a towel at Bucky’s face instead. Bucky promptly dropped the towel on the floor, stepped on it with both boots, and shuffled his way over the polished laminate. Steve shook his head, but didn’t say anything as he poured the boiling mustard mixture into a glass dish. Across the island, Thor held the pot up while Jane scooped theirs out.

“Take your eyedropper,” Tony instructed, holding his own up, “And squeeze drops into the vegetable oil. The pearls should sink to the bottom.” He squeezed the end of his eyedropper and set it into his container of mustard to demonstrate.

“That is fucking cool,” Bucky said, stopping his progress with the towel to lean down at Tony’s side and watch the mustard pearls sink through the oil.

Ignoring him, Steve grabbed his own eyedropper, filled it, and squeezed it into the mason jar of chilled vegetable oil. Rather than getting pearls, a half dozen misshapen noodles of mustard wound down to the bottom of the jar. He glared at it, and then at the eyedropper.

“Don’t squeeze it all out at once,” Tony said. Steve jumped, not expecting to find him only a foot away. Tony gave him a strange look, and then held his hand out for the eyedropper. Steve set it in his palm and Tony’s lips twisted briefly in a grimace that Steve couldn’t figure out, but he filled the eyedropper, and squeezed a single drop into the oil. Steve watched a perfect pearl spiral down through the oil, and then reached out thoughtlessly to take the eyedropper. Their fingers met briefly, but Tony pulled his hand away and took a half step back to watch as Steve repeated the process. It was almost relaxing to watch the pearls form, and he shortly had an inch of tiny mustard globes at the bottom of the jar.

“Once you’ve got all the mustard you want, just scoop them out and into the water bath,” Tony said from Thor’s side. The surgeon was crouched down level with the counter, watching the little balls form in the oil while Jane dropped the mustard in. “Same process with the ketchup. Whoever’s not working on that, come over here and we’ll put together the best damn hamburgers you’ll ever eat.”

The kitchen was strangely quiet while they worked. Tony must have agreed, because music blared out of Bruce’s Bluetooth speakers only moments after Steve noticed the lack of noise.

~*~

They sat around the remains of one of the oddest and most fun meals Steve had ever encountered. The appetizer was ravioli in clear wrappers, paired with “noodles” made from an arugula pesto, followed by what really was the best burger he’d ever tasted. The mustard and ketchup pearls gave it a strange texture that he wasn’t sure he’d like every time he ordered a burger, but they were fun for novelty. Dessert was a coconut foam steamed into a bun, and they had mojito spheres to go with the meal. The perfect bubbles of rum and mint were almost too pretty to break open, but Bucky helpfully punctured all of his spheres on his behalf.

“Is this what you serve in your restaurant?” Steve asked, taking a forkful of the coconut bun and letting it dissolve on his tongue.

“One of them,” Tony answered. He broke his last mojito sphere and tipped it into his mouth. “The Lab serves this kind of dinner entertainment, but I let Bruce do whatever he wants.”

Steve decided not to admit that he’d had no idea Bruce worked at a restaurant. He knew Bruce was a chemist and a medical doctor, so whenever he said ‘the lab,’ Steve always assumed he meant an actual lab. “How many restaurants do you have?”

“Six now, I think?” Tony answered, counting on his fingers.

“Seven,” Darcy corrected, “There’s that Black Out place in Manhattan.”

Tony gave her a look that hovered between amused, impressed, and a little concerned. Darcy blushed bright red.

“Technically it’s not open yet,” she finished, ducking into her seat and hiding behind her cocktail.

“Seven,” Tony amended, taking his attention off Darcy, much to her obvious relief. “That one we’re having some trouble with the lawyers. All the dinner guests will probably have to sign waivers so they don’t sue us if they trip in the dark. Which is just what everyone wants to do before sitting down for a meal.”  

“Your guests eat in the dark?” Thor asked for clarification, frowning.

Tony nodded. “Not completely pitch black, but pretty close. There will be some candlelight at the table, and the waiters will have night-vision goggles. The idea is to deprive your sense of sight so you pay more attention to the taste. And it’s kind of fun to eat in the dark – feels like sneaking into the kitchen when mom and dad are asleep. _If_ we can get it past the lawyers.”

“Steve can write a comic about the restaurant where someone gets murdered in the dark and the dashing detective superhero has to solve the crime and save the day,” Bucky suggested with a sideways glance at Steve.

Steve gave him a withering look in return, but Tony just smiled and said, “Sounds like publicity to me.” He took a bite of his bun and then gestured to Bucky with his fork. “Who put that together for you?”

Bucky tilted his head briefly, but followed Tony’s gaze to his prosthetic arm. He turned his left hand over and curled his fingers. “It’s a prototype,” he said finally, “My employer took care of it. I didn’t ask.”

Tony made a humming noise low in his throat, eyes locked onto the metal hand as Bucky moved his fingers. “Bionic?”

“Yeah.” Bucky gave him a speculative look, but then surprised the breath out of Steve by taking his shirt off right at the table. He sat there in his white tank top and held his arm out invitingly. Tony didn’t need it spelled out for him. He scooted his chair around the table in a clatter of scrapping that made Steve wince on behalf of Bruce’s nice floors, but he was too shocked to say anything. He caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and looked over to see Clint with a similarly thunderstruck look on his face, his fork suspended halfway to his mouth.

Bucky was completely oblivious to the attention. He twisted his arm obligingly and just nodded when Tony glanced up at him for permission to touch. Tony’s hands were professional as they followed the grooves of the prosthetic. He grabbed Bucky’s wrist in one hand and rotated his arm, bending the prosthetic at the wrist, and then at the elbow while everyone else just watched. The panels along the arm opened to mimic flexing muscles, the joints concealed so cleverly that they were invisible beneath the interlocking sheets of polished metal.

“Fantastic work,” Tony said finally, standing to pull Bucky’s arm straight up, testing his range of motion. Bucky let him do it, and Steve didn’t know if he felt more concern or pride considering that Bucky still gave out deathglares to anyone over the age of 18 who tried to touch the prosthetic. Tony finally let him go and sat back down. “Let me look at it closer and I can improve it for you.”

“Not sure I want a stranger experimenting on my arm,” Bucky said, pulling his shirt back on. “My boss would murder me if it stopped working in the middle of an assignment.”

Tony affected an affronted air as he moved his chair back to his place at one end of the table. “I’m not a stranger. I’ll have you know that I’m the foremost robotics engineer in the world. Bionics are my thing.”

Bucky snorted, but Thor unexpectedly confirmed, “It is nothing less than the truth, my friend. I frequently send amputee patients to Dr. Stark for prosthetics.”

“Dr. Stark?” Bucky asked.

“I have three Ph.D’s. You wouldn’t think so since no one ever calls me ‘doctor’ anything, but what can you do?” He shrugged dismissively, but he seemed pleased by Thor’s support. He didn’t push Bucky to agree to a closer examination, and Bucky didn’t bring it up again. The conversation shifted gradually to Jane’s work on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. She mentioned Steve’s upcoming comic, and Tony’s eyes flicked to him, but he didn’t say anything. Steve lost the opportunity again to get his opinion, and started thinking up excuses to get him alone long enough to see if he’d been interested in doing some lettering.

They cleaned up the kitchen once yawns started running around the table and said their goodbyes, Darcy using Thor as a shield to get out of the apartment unseen. Steve was the last to pick up his bag and head for the door while Tony packed up his equipment, but stopped short when his phone went off in his pocket. Frowning, he paused to dig it out, not sure who would be texting him at eleven o’clock except for Bucky, who’d walked out the door only a minute before. He didn’t recognize the number from the notification, so he typed in his pin and opened the message.

_This is Stark’s #. Txt him back and ask him out._

Steve stared in horror at the screen, eyes so wide it was almost painful, heart squeezing in his chest while his stomach dropped to hang somewhere around his knees. He quickly scrolled down and realized with an internal scream of denial that Bucky had set a timed text to Tony’s phone. His fingers weren’t quite quick enough and the message sent a moment later. Tony’s text message notification was a Pac-Man sound effect, and it sounded in the quiet room like the ring of a gong.

Steve stood rooted in place, the silence following the message notification so thick that he could feel it on the back of his neck. Sucking in a deep breath, he slowly turned around to see Tony looking at his phone with one eyebrow hiked up his forehead.

_This is Steve’s number. Hes prob too chickenshit, so ask him out. I will castrate u if yr a dick to him, swear2god._

Tony’s eyes lifted from the screen and he met Steve’s gaze, expression neutral, but the corners of his eyes were lined gently under the bright lights.

“Please ignore him,” Steve said miserably. “He’s my best friend, but sometimes he can also be a jerk.”

“Most best friends are,” Tony responded. He tapped his fingers on the counter in a quick rhythm and stepped out of the kitchen, approaching Steve with his head tipped like he was solving a puzzle. The height difference between them was more noticeable with nothing distracting Steve from Tony, and he might as well have been back in high school, suddenly tall and gangly with no idea where his elbows and knees were most of the time, staring down at Peggy Carter and feeling like an ogre.

“Running the risk of being castrated by your friend’s magnificent prosthetic, how does dinner sound?”

“Yes,” Steve answered immediately, too quickly. He winced and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I mean… well, yes. That sounds good. Not right now because it’s eleven o’clock and we just ate, but maybe later?”

Tony’s smile didn’t show his teeth, but it lit up his face. “We close early on Sundays if you want to come by the restaurant after closing. Maybe eight?”

“Which one?” Steve asked ruefully.

Not quite meeting his eyes, Tony answered, “Carbonell’s is the only one I really think of as mine. I’ll text you the address.”

“And I will –” _be late on my deadline,_ “See you then.”

They might have stood silently across from each other all night, but the door opening nearly made Steve jump out of his skin. He turned quickly to see Bruce in the doorway looking curiously in between them. “Was just headed out,” Steve said quickly, adjusting the strap of his bag on his shoulder. He pulled up a smile for Tony and said, “See you Sunday.”

“How was class?” Bruce asked as Steve headed for the door.

“Great! Fun, you should teach us more of the science food,” Steve said, but he didn’t stop. If he stopped, he would end up in a conversation, and Tony would be right there and Steve wouldn’t be able to concentrate, and it would be a mess. “Have a good night,” he said on his way out the door. He closed it behind him and took several slow breaths with his back pressed against the wall.

The screen of his phone was damp from being squeezed in his palm. He wiped it off on one thigh and flipped through his contacts.

_Jerk_ , he texted quickly.

Bucky responded two minutes later with, _U never said not 2_

_You stole his phone!_

_He left it unlocked on the counter. His own fault. Did he ask u out??_

Steve typed in _yes_ , but then paused and erased it. He gave the phone a satisfied look and clicked the display off. He felt it buzzing in his pocket all the way home, counting twenty-three messages, and knew that Bucky would be going out of his mind with curiosity, but it served him right.


	2. Two

The silence lasted until Tony heard Steve’s footsteps on the stairs. He rounded on Bruce, pointing at him with an accusing finger. “Why didn’t you tell me that you’ve been teaching _Steve Rogers_ how to make spaghetti for the last six months?” he demanded.

Bruce blinked twice and made a confused gesture toward the door. “Steve? Do you know him?” He frowned and shuffled past Tony into the kitchen. “And we haven’t been making spaghetti for six months. What did you teach them?”

He crouched down to open Tony’s bag and pulled out the siphon. He held it up. “I could be wrong, but I don’t think chicken kiev needs foam.”

“Everything needs foam,” Tony said dismissively. He grabbed the siphon and stuck it back in the bag. “Don’t change the subject. You’ve had Steve Rogers in your kitchen for six months and didn’t even tell me. I feel so betrayed right now.”

Bruce rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and scratched at his stubble, straightening out of the crouch. “I know he’s your type, but you got annoyed when I suggested that you might want to meet him, so…”

Tony cut his hands through the air to halt the reminder of blowing up at Bruce when he’d suggested one date too many to get him out of the ‘increasingly antisocial mood’ he’d been in for years. “Also beside the point. Steve Rogers? Comic book artist?” When Bruce showed no signs of any lightbulbs popping on over his head, Tony groaned. “I have every single comic he’s put out in the last ten years! I made you read them!”

Bruce winced and made a silent ‘o’ with his lips. “I didn’t put that together. Sorry.”

Pacing a tiny, agitated circle, Tony declared, “I thought we were friends, Bruce. Friends don’t do this to each other.” He pointed at Bruce’s nose. “You’re a bad friend.”

Not upset in the least, Bruce just said, “I’ll make sure to mention that at the next board meeting you’re going to make me attend for you.”

“See that you do,” Tony sniffed.

~*~

Tony started preparing a beef bouillon Saturday night. He didn’t even realize what he was doing until he tasted the broth an hour later and it hit him like a punch to the gut. He stared at for several seconds, broth dripping onto the counter, the rich scent filling his kitchen like a perfume he’d forgotten. It was his grandma’s recipe, the first thing she’d taught him to cook, and Tony hadn’t touched it since her death five years before. He set the spoon on the counter and put his hands behind his back so he didn’t pick the pot up and dump the whole thing in the sink.

Steve Rogers was going to be in his kitchen in less than twenty-four hours, and Tony could have made him an elegant meal that would have cost three hundred dollars at his high-end restaurant, could have made him a tasting plate of the most unique preparations molecular gastronomy had to offer, could have flown in ice shaved off a glacier to serve his date Coffin Bay King Oysters on. Instead, without a single thought, he’d thrown vegetables and steak into a pot and let it simmer while he closed up the restaurant, just like his grandmother would have.

He eyed the broth uncertainly and started reviewing what he had on hand and what else he could make on short notice, but he couldn’t make himself move toward the fridge. If his grandma were still alive, she would have made it for Steve herself. Tony could hear exactly how the conversation would have gone: grandma would have been overjoyed that he had a date and started digging things out of the fridge before she even knew who it was. Tony would have tried to point out that it wasn’t like he was on his first date, seriously, didn’t she ever read the magazines that published articles on him? She would have swatted him with a wooden spoon and told him that obviously this one was special because she’d never heard a word about any of those young ladies and gentlemen in the magazines, and of course she read the articles – how else was she supposed to know where to send the hate mail? Tony would have eventually helped her chop vegetables while he told her all about Steve, and asked for advice on how to break it to Steve that he hadn’t just ‘read his comics,’ but actually had an entire bookcase dedicated to them like a potentially creepy stalker shrine.

Letting his breath out slowly, Tony added more pepper, stirred the broth, and set the lid back on to continue simmering. He stayed where he was for several minutes and waited for the tears, but they didn’t come. All he could remember was her singing in French while he hid under the kitchen island trying not to cry, her voice concealing whatever little noises he made, her knife keeping time as she chopped vegetables. He remembered crawling out with his face puffy and hot and his head hurting. She never said a word about his red eyes or asked him why he’d been crying at the first place, just lifted him onto a tall stool, put a vegetable masher in his hand, and the bowl of potatoes in front of him. He remembered his mother coming down to eat with them at the kitchen table, and grandma telling her that Tony was a natural in the kitchen. He was proud of the meal, and it was probably the first time in his life that he’d felt like he’d done something _good_. It had been five years since Eleanor Carbonell died and he could still barely think of her without his chest getting tight, but it finally felt okay to make her a part of his life again.

He left the broth where it was and planned the next day around the rest of the steps for the first meal he’d actually cooked for a date. He’d cooked for friends before – Pepper once they both recovered from the awkwardness of the weekend in the Malibu gone wrong, Rhodey and Bruce while they were in school, Happy every year for his birthday. He’d even cooked for his dad once. But he’d never cooked _for a date_ , and wasn’t even sure he’d ever had a date that didn’t start with the flash of a camera and end with a messy fuck in a hotel room.

“This is hero worship,” Tony finally admitted to the stove. “I am actually _nervous_. Forty-five years old, how is this my life?”

He’d fallen in love with Steve’s comics years before he even knew what the famously shy artist looked like. Having grown up in the spotlight of public opinion and spent most of his teens and twenties rubbing drunken elbows with the hottest and wildest Hollywood had to offer, weak at the knees was not something he was accustomed to.

Tony sat at the kitchen table and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “You are a mess, Tony Stark.” He glanced back at the pot of stock and laughed. He hadn’t felt so shaky since the day he flipped the switch to bring Dum-E online for the first time, and he’d never felt nervous for a date. This was something he was good at, the wooing, the smiles, the subtle and not-so-subtle invitations to a convenient flat surface. Except that it wasn’t that. If he were wooing Steve Rogers into his bed, he would have rented out a stadium for the evening and hired a celebrity chef to make them a picnic on the pitcher’s mound. Instead, grandma’s bouillon recipe bubbled away on the stove and he had two pounds of potatoes waiting to be peeled and mashed.

~*~

“Is this the lunch special?” Jarvis asked from behind him the next morning.

Tony craned his neck, trying to keep on top of a dozen pancakes and a crepe. The lunch special was an eggplant casserole, prepped and ready to go into the oven, but Jarvis was hovering over the stove with a fork. It took Tony a moment to remember what he had on the burner and he promptly picked up a slice of apple and threw it at the back of his restaurant manager’s head.

“Stay out of that!” he called, moving automatically so Dum-E could pick the apple up off the tile. Jarvis fixed the back of his hair with a flick of his fingers and put the lid back on the potatoes. He eyed Tony in that strange way of his that looked completely innocent, but really meant he was taking Tony apart like a matryoshka doll.

“Something special about a pot of boiling potatoes?” he asked curiously, patting Dum-E on the head when the bot drew even with him and reached out to retrieve the apple from under the counter. Dum-E trilled an annoyed sound.

“If I didn’t throw things every now and then,” Tony said, ignoring Jarvis, “You wouldn’t have anything to clean up. Get those potatoes shredded, chopchop!”

Dum-E took his time throwing the apple slice away and then chirruped an interrogative.

“No, you’re not chopping them, they’re hashbrowns. They get shredded.” Tony neatly scooped the crepe off the griddle and dropped it onto the plate, flipped five of the pancakes, and poured another measure of the crepe batter onto the griddle. Dum-E selected a potato and hovered over the food processor with it. He beeped again. “You are the worst sous chef in the history of sous chefs. I am going to donate you to a culinary school. And not a nice one!” Tony warned, pointing at him.

“You could try hiring a sous chef with hands,” Jarvis suggested quietly, crossing his arms over his chest. He was impeccably dressed as usual, pressed black pants, a pristine white shirt with a pinstriped vest and purple tie, silver cufflinks and starched cuffs.

“You could try not wearing a tie to work, but that’s probably not going to happen either,” Tony responded. He pulled a third crepe off the griddle, loaded up three stacks of pancakes and started dressing the plates.

Jarvis watched him stuffing crepes and layering the pancakes with butter for a moment before asking, “So if not for lunch, what are the potatoes for?”

“What do you normally do with boiled potatoes?” Tony snapped his fingers at Dum-E. “You’re killing me over here, the pancakes are done and you don’t even have seasoning on those. Give them here.” Tony swiped the bowl of freshly shredded potatoes and tossed them with his own mix of seasoning, adding a shake of cinnamon to the last third of the bowl for Joshua, who’d once longingly told Tony that his mother had made them that way. He told Tony every morning that they still weren’t like his mother’s, but they would do.

“Are there pancakes coming out of this kitchen anytime this morning?” Angie called through the window, drumming her nails on the polished steel sill. “Mable is ready to start a revolution out here and says that she’s going to smack you if you’ve done something weird to her pancakes again.”

“Mable is always ready to start a revolution, and she always loves the pancakes. Go show her how to use Facebook, she’ll be happy for a while.”

“You think I’m helping to unleash that woman on the larger world?” Angie snorted. “Seriously, what’s the hold up? You’re being slow this morning.”

“Do you see anyone else back here?”

“Jarvis and Dum-E are back there,” Angie pointed out reasonably. “And you don’t ever have anyone back there, so why so distracted this morning?”

“Might have something to do with the potatoes,” Jarvis suggested.

“The potatoes are just fine. See? They’re coming off the grill now.” He pressed the spatula into the large patty of potatoes for a few seconds to listen to them hiss, and then cut them into portions. The classic pancake breakfast wasn’t even on the menu, but his early morning customers had been Sunday regulars of Carbonell’s for two decades before it even _was_ Carbonell’s, and they’d hardly seemed to notice that the only unchanged thing about the place was that they still served food. Tony wasn’t sure they’d ever even opened the menu.  

“Actually, I meant the potatoes in the pot that are currently boiling over,” Jarvis said innocently.

Tony leaned back and cursed. He pointed to the plates, and then at Jarvis. “Put those on the counter with the apricot foam for Mable, and then come back and tell me that she doesn’t like my pancakes.” He turned to get around Jarvis, stepped over Dum-E, and pulled the lid off the boiling potatoes. The burner hissed and spit at the spilled water while Tony prodded the potatoes with the tip of a knife. Yanking the towel out of his apron pocket, Tony grabbed the pot by the handles and hustled it over to the sink.

“Dum-E, get out the stuff for the strawberry sauce and the lemon reduction,” he said on his way past the prep station.

He just had the potatoes to the right consistency when Angie poked her head back through the window. “Mable would like to tell you all the reasons that she doesn’t like your pancakes, and Joshua says the potatoes still aren’t right.”

“They can tell me later,” Tony said distractedly, stirring butter into the potatoes and snagging a tasting spoon out of the case.

Angie disappeared out of the window and pushed through the kitchen door a moment later. “Alright, are you dying or something? Because if you are, I need to know right now so I can find a new job.”

Tony dropped the spoon in the sink and gave her a confused look over his shoulder as he covered the potatoes in foil. “What?”

“Are you dying?” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her weight on one hip. “You can tell me, I can handle it.”

“Why would you think I’m _dying_?” Tony demanded. He set the potatoes on the first shelf in the walk-in and came out with a tray of chopped leeks, carrots, and onions.

“You _are_ acting strangely, sir,” Jarvis said gently.

“This is the first time I’ve ever heard you put the old-timers off,” Angie added for corroboration, “And you haven’t left kitchen all morning, not even to feed those cats outside. That’s right, I know you’ve been the one giving them scraps. I had to do it for you, they were making such a racket.”

Tony glared at her while he opened containers of prepped vegetables. “I’m allowed to have a private life.”

The mood in the kitchen lifted immediately. Angie uncrossed her arms and put her hands on her hips, red lips parting in a grin. Next to her, Jarvis let out a huge sigh of relief, putting one hand on his stomach as if he had to hold himself up. “Thank _God_ ,” he breathed.

“You have a _date_!” Angie declared. “Who is it? Do we know them? I have to tell Peggy!” She had her cellphone out before Tony could even take in a breath to deny it, and he was left watching in fascinated irritation as her fingers flew over the screen, Jarvis looking like he’d just dodged a bullet.

“Why does me being distracted mean I have a date? I have dates all the time.”

“No,” Angie corrected patiently, “You have pretty fuckbuddies all the time. You’re cooking for this person! Who is it? Is it Rhodey?”

“Miss Martinelli,” Jarvis interrupted sharply, giving her a disapproving look, “I’m sure you have customers who would like refills on their coffee.”

She rolled her eyes, but her phone buzzed in her hands and her face lit up again. “Sure, sure.” She gave Tony a sly look, “Do you want Peggy to pick up any flowers for you on her way in?”

“ _No_ ,” Tony hissed, but he wondered if Steve might appreciate flowers on the table, and then quickly disregarded the notion. “Go keep Mable company,” he ordered to stop himself from asking if putting calla lilies out would be too much. 

She gave him a jaunty salute and patted Dum-E on her way out the door. Jarvis remained quietly where he was and Tony tried the generally unsuccessful tactic of ignoring him until he went away. Within minutes, Jarvis had his sleeves rolled up and was crushing fresh garlic at the station next to him.

“Don’t you have things to do in the front?” Tony asked, dumping carrots into a stockpot with beef bones from the previous night’s dinner special already waiting.

“The old-timers know their way around this place better than I do, and we won’t get any of your trendy crowd in for at least another hour.”

Jarvis didn’t say anything else until Tony finally confessed, “Yes, I have a date. He’s coming by after we close tonight.”

“Not one of your usual dates, I take it?”

“You mean not one of my pretty fuckbuddies?” Tony teased, and felt vindicated when Jarvis winced. Jarvis’ life before immigrating to the States was mostly still a mystery, but Tony did know that he was classically trained as a butler, and apparently the old rules of manners still stuck hard with him.

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Jarvis admitted with a sigh.

“No, he’s not one of those. No cameras, no dancing… and I have no idea what we’re going to do besides eat a lot and stare at each other.”

“Most first dates seem to work that way.” Jarvis passed behind him with the cutting board and scraped the minced garlic into the pot. Behind them, Dum-E had the immersion blender going in the strawberry sauce. Tony could tell without turning around that it was up too high and probably making a mess, but he didn’t mind. “Do you want to talk about him?”

Tony shied away from the question and instead explained the four course meal he had planned. Jarvis made wine suggestions, and Angie summoned him back out to the front before Tony had to confront the reality of being alone with another person and nothing but his cooking in between them. The picnic on the pitcher’s mound was sounding better and better.

~*~

“That doesn’t smell familiar,” Jarvis commented later that night as he pushed through the kitchen doors. They’d both handed the reins off in the middle of the day, but come back in to help with the dinner rush and closing. He peered over Tony’s shoulder and then reached for a clean spoon, holding it up questioningly. Tony stepped away from the pan and gestured to it with the wooden spoon. Jarvis dipped the spoon into the bubbling mixture of chopped steak, sausage, tomatoes, and bouillon.

“I don’t supposed I could convince you to put this on the dinner menu?” he asked, eyeing Tony out of the corner of his eye.

Three days earlier, Tony wouldn’t have hesitated even a moment to say _no_ , but he answered, “I’ll think about it. Good?”

“With the potatoes, it will be perfect. Do you have enough time to bake it?” Jarvis asked as he checked his watch, concerned. He looked around the spotless kitchen, hands automatically smoothing down his vest while he searched for something to do.

Tony rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t hold in a smile. “Yes, mom.”  

“We’ve cleaned the front, and turned off the lights,” Jarvis continued. “Do you need anything else? Do you have wine selected?”

“I have a pinot pulled, and I’m not twelve, I don’t need you to chaperone my date.”

“You haven’t washed your hair in the last three days, and you have tomato sauce on your shirt, sir,” Jarvis pointed out, gesturing to the spot. “Should I hazard a guess at the state of your apartment? Peggy and I can get up there and clean while you finish dinner. Have you started the bread?”

“The bread is in the oven upstairs, the custard is in the fridge, this is almost finished, and I have plenty of time to change my shirt and wash my hair. Go home, and take Peggy with you, for the love of all good things, please take Peggy with you. The very idea of Peggy Carter cleaning my living room gives me actual shivers of terror.”

“She probably wouldn’t damage _much_ , and we can at least clean the floors-”

Tony put his hands on Jarvis’ shoulders and turned him around. He walked him straight out the swinging doors, knocking him into Peggy and catching her by the arm to get them both out of the kitchen. “Home, go home.”

“You’re not even going to let us meet him?” Peggy protested, peering around Tony’s shoulder as if he might be hiding his date under the kitchen workstation.

“Absolutely not. I want him to actually stay long enough to eat.”

Peggy pursed her lips, but her eyes were bright with amusement and excitement. She unexpectedly put her arms around his shoulders and kissed his cheek. Tony froze – he wasn’t used to being touched without warning or preparation and Peggy didn’t usually touch anyone unless it was with her fist or her knee. She squeezed him once and stepped away.

“Text me if you need me to engineer an escape route for you.”

“You _do_ have our numbers on speed dial, don’t you?” Jarvis added.

“This might come as a shock to you,” Tony said, putting his hands on their backs and propelling them to the door, “But I actually am an adult who is older than both of you. Bye.” He reached around Jarvis’ waist to unlock the door and nudged them both outside. He let them get a few steps away from the door before adding, “Thank you.”

Peggy rolled her eyes at the sentiment, but Jarvis nodded. He held his arm out for Peggy, and Peggy gave him a lavishly sarcastic curtsey before wrapping her hand around his elbow. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she said over her shoulder as Jarvis lead her away.

“That’s not a very long list,” Tony called after her, and smiled when she casually flipped him off without turning around.

~*~

The knock at the door came exactly at eight. It was timed so precisely that Tony could have set his set his clock by it. Of course, he only knew that it was exactly eight because he was staring at his phone display, more than half expecting a text message canceling their date. He stared at the door, frozen, and wished for a moment that Steve really had just cancelled on him. The knock came again, louder and a little quicker. Tony finally dragged himself out of the booth and stuffed his phone into his pocket before opening the door. Steve stood on the small concrete step, barely illuminated by the streetlight behind him, dressed casually in dark blue jeans and a light canvas jacket. Even in the semi-darkness, his smile was radiant. And he was holding a bouquet of roses in the crook of his arm.

Seeing Tony’s attention, he held the bouquet out, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “You’re probably not used to getting flowers,” he said after a second of Tony just staring at them. “I can just leave them outside.”

“Red and gold are good colors for me,” Tony said before he could get more than half a step away from the door. “Almost like you asked one of my friends what my favorite colors were.” He meant it to be a casual joke, but from the way Steve ducked his head, he realized he’d unintentionally guessed right and was mildly surprised that Bruce even knew his favorite colors. He reached out to take the bouquet, brushing a finger over one soft petal, and finally remembered to move away from the door so Steve could come in.

“I’ve actually never gotten any kind of plant as a gift before,” Tony said nonsensically as Steve passed him into the restaurant’s dark interior. He closed and locked the door, only the kitchen light through the food service window saving the room from complete darkness.

“I thought about bringing you a plant in a pot, but I didn’t know if you liked plants, or if you really needed a great big pot of basil in your window...” He cleared his throat when Tony couldn’t come up with an answer, and looked around. “I thought your blackout restaurant was having trouble with the lawyers?”

Tony hiked an eyebrow at him, and then glanced around. “Sorry, I didn’t want anyone else to think we were still open.” He cleared his throat and dragged his attention away from the flowers, gesturing to the kitchen door with a tilt of his head. “Come on, I have someone for you to meet.”

He felt Steve’s hesitation and realized that ‘I want you to meet someone’ was probably a pretty terrifying concept on a first date, but they were through the kitchen doors before he could reassure Steve that his father wasn’t waiting at the kitchen table with a shotgun and a bottle of whiskey. The kitchen, brightly lit after the dark dining area, was empty except for Dum-E plugged into his charging station. Steve looked around curiously and gave Tony an uncertain glance.

“Wake up, lazy, come say hello,” Tony said in Dum-E’s direction. A red light flicked on over Dum-E’s camera and he made a production of stretching, beeping at Tony reproachfully. “It’s not past your bedtime, stop complaining. Come here.”

Steve stepped forward to meet Dum-E as the bot undocked and rolled out of his charging station, chirping a greeting at Steve. He held his hand out for a shake and Steve laughed as he took it, examining Dum-E gleefully. “This is amazing. Did you build it?”

Tony nodded. “He was my first successful AI. Well, he was just a robot when I first built him, but he’s been upgrade a time or fifty since then.”

Dum-E made a quick series of clicks to remind him that he had been upgraded seventy-three times since he was first constructed thirty-six years before. He also took the opportunity to point out that his birthday was in fifty-two days, seventeen hours, and nine minutes. Tony didn’t answer him, discreetly sticking his tongue out at the bot while Steve’s attention was absorbed.

“What’s his name?” Steve asked, and Tony marveled at his immediate switch in pronoun from _it_ to _he_.

“Dum-E.”

“Dummy?” Steve frowned, looking so offended on Dum-E’s behalf that Tony couldn’t help but laugh.

“D-u-m-e. Don’t blame me, he was named by a nine year-old.”

Steve twisted to look back at him, his smile soft and eyes all but glowing under the kitchen lights. “You let a nine year-old name your robot?” he asked, voice warm with amusement.

Shrugging, Tony said, “Sure.” He didn’t mention that _he_ was that nine year-old. He let Steve examine the bot for another minute and then said, “Back to bed, buddy.”

Dum-E whined at him and Steve laughed. He held out his hand to shake again. “It was nice to meet you, Dum-E.”

Dum-E reluctantly rolled back to his charging station and docked himself, but he didn’t power down. “If you do any prep in the middle of the night, try not to light anything on fire,” Tony told him. He stepped forward to put a hand over Dum-E’s lens. “Sweet dreams.”

He waited until Dum-E had powered down and then turned to see Steve watching him with that same soft smile. Realizing that he’d been caught staring, Steve cleared his throat and looked away, but his eyes flickered back a moment later. Tony crossed his eyes just to make Steve laugh and Steve did, dragging his hair back away from his face.

“Sorry. You’ve probably already realized this,” he said, gesturing at the flowers, “But I’m really bad at this.”

Tony tipped his head. “At what?”

“Dating? People in general?” Steve suggested, wincing.

“Look at that, we already have things in common.” He wound his way through the kitchen to the locked door leading up to his apartment. “Hope you’re hungry,” he said over his shoulder. Steve jolted as if he’d forgotten how to walk and followed quickly behind.

“Starved.”

~*~

“This is not what I was expecting.”

Tony looked up from the Hachis Parmentier, pausing with a forkful of mashed potatoes hovering over the plate. “What were you expecting?” he asked curiously, taking the bite and watching Steve’s eyes drift over his lips. He might have pulled the fork out a little more slowly than he had to, but Steve didn’t seem like he was complaining.

Steve shook his head shortly and shifted in the chair. He took a generous sip of his pinot and finally answered, “I don’t know what I was expecting. Things on fire or defying gravity maybe.”

“To be fair,” Tony said, “I do have something to light on fire later. Can’t have dinner without a culinary torch.”

Steve laughed. “Why stop there? Why not just break out the acetylene torch?”

“You’re right, I’m thinking too small. Not something I’m accused of… ever.” Tony used his fork to make a broad gesture and continued, “We’ll renovate a small warehouse, all exposed beams and faux rust on the walls, beaten copper fixtures, concrete floors, tables and bars made out of brushed steel.” He pointed at Steve, “Big strapping servers in welding aprons and shirts that are two sizes too small. We’ll serve only food that can be lit on fire at the table, and the drinks in mason jars.” Tony nodded decisively and scooped up another mouthful of meat and potatoes.

Tony watched as Steve’s face went through a similar transition as most of his shareholders whenever he came up with a new idea – first waiting for the punchline, and then uncertain, incredulous, and finally impressed. “That… would probably actually work.”

“My name would be on it, so of course it would,” Tony told him with a wink and a smile.

“There is no reason that I should find that ego of yours attractive,” Steve commented, and then looked immediately like he’d regretted saying it. “Which is not to say that I do,” he finished with much less conviction.

Tony reached forward and stole his fork. He scooped up the last of Steve’s dinner and offered it to him. “I won’t tell anyone that you’ve got a crush on me,” he promised, which was a dirty lie, he was going to tell anyone who would listen the very moment he had two seconds alone with his phone. He didn’t think Steve believed him anyway, but he took Tony’s wrist in his hand and held him still to take the bite off the fork. He made an appreciative sound, eyes closing, still holding Tony’s wrist.

“I think I could eat this three times a day and be very happy.” His eyes opened and he smiled without showing his teeth. It was both sweet and sexy and Tony had to sit back before he abandoned the rest of dinner and climbed into Steve’s lap. “I would have to eat on a treadmill, but I could do it,” Steve added with a laugh.

“You would have to be on a treadmill in your sleep,” Tony agreed. Silence fell, and Steve used the opportunity to grab his fork back. He ran a piece of bread around his plate and left it nearly clean in its wake.

“It’s my grandmother’s recipe,” Tony confessed for no reason except that she’d been on his mind, and he was very conscious of the familiar scents in the kitchen. “She would have loved you. Mostly because you probably have the metabolism of a horse and she could feed you six times a day.”

“If this is an example of her food, I would have been happy to let her.” Steve glanced up at him through his ridiculously long lashes. “You were close?”

Nodding, Tony finished the last of his bread and took a sip of his wine. “She raised me,” he said, a night for confessions. It wasn’t really anything he hadn’t said in a dozen interviews, but it felt different under the soft track lighting in his kitchen. “She was a firecracker. Raised my mom on her own, worked three jobs to put her through college, kicked my ass from here to the moon when she found out about my drug habit, and sat with me the entire time I was detoxing.”

It was too much for a first date, that was why he didn’t do intimate dinners in his own kitchen, the exact reason he met his dates at noisy clubs and high society events where everyone had a Colegate smile permanently chiseled onto their face. He hid behind his glass and tried to think of a new topic, but Steve surprised him by guessing, “She taught you to cook?”

Tony should have just nodded and changed the subject anyway, but he put his glass down and said, “My parents weren’t _bad_ or anything… okay, sometimes dad was pretty bad when I was a kid, but mostly they were just busy. If it weren’t for Mémère, I would have been raised by a nanny. I probably spent three quarters of my childhood at her giant butcher’s block kitchen island. She helped me open The Lab, and then Carbonell’s. Couldn’t have done it without her.”

“She sounds like a great lady,” Steve said gently.

“She was.” Tony forced a laugh. “Not great first date material, sorry.”

Steve tipped his head to examine Tony’s face. Tony wasn’t sure of how to interpret his expression, or how to handle the conflict in his chest. He should have been uncomfortable to bear himself so easily and completely to someone he respected, to sit and wait for judgement, but nothing about Steve’s posture or expression suggested pity, or _poor little rich boy_ , and it was _strange_.

Steve gave him a thoughtful look, and then asked, “Do you have roof access?”

In the long list of responses Tony would have expected, that wasn’t even on the same book shelf. He hiked one eyebrow, but said, “Yes.”

“Want to take the rest of dinner outside?”

“Who said there’s a ‘rest’?” Tony asked, but he was already shifting his chair. It had rained earlier in the day and it was probably sixty degrees out, but if it got him out of talking about his troubled childhood, who was he to say no?

“You did say something involved a culinary torch,” Steve pointed out. He stood and gathered the plates off the table while Tony grabbed a container of sliced cheeses and fruit out of the fridge. He set it in a basket along with the remainder of the wine. The tap turned on and Tony glanced over to see Steve standing at the sink with his sleeves rolled up, looking stupidly domestic as he washed the dinner plates and rinsed the wine glasses. Tony probably should have made some good-host noises about Steve not needing to clean his kitchen, but he ended up just leaning against the counter to watch him move. His shirt pulled tight across his shoulders with each movement, and his hands were graceful even employed to such a mundane task. He had a sort of fluid way of moving that Tony normally associated with long time yogis and people too intoxicated to be tense.

Steve put the last plate in the dish rack and flicked the tap off. He turned around with the wine glasses in his hands, dripping water on the floor, looking for a towel. Tony stayed where he was for several seconds, watching with amusement as Steve tried to lift the glasses higher, as if that might prevent the water from hitting the floor. When their eyes finally met, Tony cracked a smile and reached behind him to grab the towel off the oven door handle. Instead of holding the towel out, he took the glasses one at a time and gave them quick swipes with the towel before setting them aside. Watching Steve carefully, Tony wrapped the towel around his hands and squeezed. Steve held his hands still and let Tony dry each finger and pull to towel over his wrists. He could feel Steve’s breath ghosting on his cheek where they stood too close, and it would be easy enough to just turn his head and set his lips to the column of Steve’s throat. He swallowed hard and pulled away, dropping the towel to the counter.

Sounding almost disappointed, Steve asked, “Blanket?”

“On the back of the couch.” Tony pointed vaguely to the living room. Steve passed so close to him as he moved that Tony could smell the subtle spice of his aftershave and feel the heat off his body. Tony packed the glasses into the basket and led Steve over to the window with the fire escape leading up.  A poured concrete slab that functioned like a porch was more-or-less dry, but Tony still didn’t like the idea of sitting on it. He set the basket on the ground and tried to remember if he’d ever gotten around to bringing lawn chairs up, but that was one of those things he only ever thought about when he was standing on the damp roof in the cold.

“I don’t think shivering is going to make for a very romantic picnic,” Tony warned, arching an eyebrow at Steve, who just stood on the slab with his hands in his pockets, apparently unconcerned by the cold.

Steve twisted to look back at him. He held a hand out, and pulled Tony onto the slab next to him. “Have you ever been to Iceland?” Steve asked. If it was Tony’s night for confessions, it must have been Steve’s night for nonsensical questions.

“No. I’ve gotten close a few times, but never touched down.”

“Bucky and I went the summer after we graduated. He hates the cold and stayed in the hotel the whole time, but I climbed up to the roof every night. There was no roof access, so I just climbed up from our window,” he explained with a mischievous smile.

“No wonder Clint likes you,” Tony muttered, rolling his eyes.

Steve chuckled and nodded. “I’d never seen so many stars in my life, or felt so small. We don’t get to see many here.” He tipped his head to look up. The sky was clear of cloud cover, but the light pollution made all but the brightest of stars impossible to see. He was quiet for a second, his brows curling in while he thought. Tony shivered, and tucked his hands under his arms. Steve glanced at him, and then shook the blanket out and wrapped it away from him. When Steve moved away, Tony moved with him, fitting neatly into his chest, Tony at just the perfect height to tuck his head under Steve’s chin. Steve didn’t even hesitate to wrap his arms around Tony’s arms and lean on him.

“My dad died before I was born,” he said after a quiet minute. “My mom met him in the military – she was a nurse. He died in an accident four months before I was born. She raised me alone, but whenever she was missing him the most, we would go outside and look up at the stars. She told me that my dad was one of them, and I was lucky to have an angel for a dad.” Steve laughed awkwardly. “That was before I knew that they’re just suns, so far away that they might already be dead and we wouldn’t even know it. But it was nice to think of it that way, that with as vast as the heavens are, there was someone up there who noticed me. Sometimes when I miss my mom, I climb up on a roof and watch the sky.”

Tony had never been given the luxury of comforting fantasies. He understood the difference between fission and fusion by the time he was seven and could identify the relative age of a star by its color and luminosity before most children knew basic addition. There were no angels on fluffy white clouds for him

“I just cook,” Tony said, “And do things to annoy my dad in Mémère’s honor.” He shifted in Steve’s arms and tipped his head back to rest on his shoulder. “Do you have a furnace in your chest or something?”

“I’ve always run hot,” Steve said, shrugging.

“Oh, I see now. I understand your nefarious plan. Make me shiver just so you have an excuse to hug me? For how sneaky your friends are, you really aren’t very good at the-”

“Can I kiss you?” Steve interrupted, setting his forehead against Tony’s temple.

“ _God_ , yes.” 


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Curious about any of the recipes? Check them out: 
> 
> Mojito - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpl29em--C4  
> Arugula spaghetti- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt34q4TVFyY  
> Feta ravioli - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRCKmx-dO3A  
> Hamburger with condiment pearls- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYGmwMWNkdk  
> Coconut steam bun- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZwNE-hg2Dg  
> Hachis Parmentier- http://www.eatlivetravelwrite.com/2010/10/french-fridays-with-dorie-hachis-parmentier/

Steve swallowed the tail end of Tony’s agreement. He held the back of Tony’s head in one hand and twisted at the hip to lean over him, tongue pushing into his surprisingly cool mouth. Tony turned in his arms and rose onto his toes, grabbing Steve by the neck with both hands and angling his chin to deepen the contact. Steve didn’t have enough experience to definitely say that Tony Stark was an expert kisser, but he was the best Steve had ever encountered. He was light-headed in moments, pushing helplessly into Tony’s body, licking at the noises Tony made and feeding them back to him in soft pants and gasps.

Breaking away from him just long enough to suck in a deep breath, Tony walked him backwards to the side of the building. He fixed his lip to the side of Steve’s neck and mouthed gently at his pulse, fingers rubbing against his scalp. Steve just barely had the presence of mind to hold onto the blanket. Though he was quickly growing overheated himself, he could feel Tony’s faint shivers against his chest. He hit the wall a harder than he expected and immediately slid down it, drawing Tony into his lap. Tony went willingly, knees folding neatly over Steve’s thighs, mouth finding his once more.

He would have happily stayed that way all night, sharing quick sips of air between their lips, learning the ways their bodies fit together. Tony tore away from him with a soft groan and set their foreheads together. “There’s no reason I should find every damn thing about you so attractive,” he said so quietly that Steve wouldn’t have heard it if Tony’s mouth wasn’t an inch from his skin.

Curling his arms more tightly around Tony’s waist, Steve mouthed at the corner of his lips. “Want to stop?”

“Not a fair question,” Tony complained, but he leaned back and stretched to grab the basket he’d brought up on the roof. “You can’t expect someone to say no to you when your eyes are so close,” he continued, “It’s criminal influence.”

Steve laughed, but he closed his eyes and asked, “Want to stop?”

Tony’s lips closed gently on his again. He closed his teeth on Steve’s lower lip and nibbled gently. “No,” he said as he withdrew. Steve opened his eyes again, but Tony covered them with one palm. “Stay that way.” If his voice shook, it could have just as easily been from the cold. Steve ran his hands over Tony’s back and down his legs, keeping his eyes closed and leaning his head back against the wall. He heard the slosh of liquid against glass, and when Tony’s lips set to his again, they were moist with wine.

Parting his lips, Steve accepted the modest mouthful of wine. It shouldn’t have been, but something about it was so instantly, erotically intimate that he moaned around it and almost choked. Tony let him get his breath back, and then fed him a sliver of cheese. The flavor was sharp and sweet on his tongue, and there at the end, smoky. Steve shifted his weight restlessly, painfully aware of the space around his body without the benefit of eyesight. Arousal pooled low in his gut, throbbing in time with his pulse, but he couldn’t make himself do anything to break the strange spell.

Tony continued to feed him slices of different cheeses and tidbits of fruits, explaining each to him in a low voice so fluid and filled with promise that Steve couldn’t hear a word of it. His hands tightened on Tony’s hips and he tipped his head automatically to accept the next morsel, using the opportunity to ease his tongue through Tony’s teeth. It was a struggle to keep his eyes closed, and he longed for a blindfold to help keep him honest, but he stubbornly persisted through a dozen slices of cheese, the soft bites of bread torn away from the crust, another mouthful of wine that dribbled out of the corners of his lips, through his beard, and down his throat. Tony followed the trail with his tongue in reverse, licking a broad stripe over his collarbone and dragging the edge up his neck. He fastened his mouth to Steve’s jaw and bit gently, and then again, less gently. A whimper escaped the back of Steve’s throat and he searched blindly for Tony’s lips. Tony let him have a brief open-mouthed kiss, and then pulled away, just far enough that they weren’t touching, but Tony’s breath ghosted across Steve’s lips and cheeks.

“I did promise you something to light on fire,” Tony said after several moments broken only by the fine shivers running down his spine, and the whisper of Steve’s breath. “Want to take this back inside where it’s not fifty degrees?”

“Depends on whether or not I can open my eyes,” Steve answered, but he was already shifting to reposition Tony’s weight.

“I guess,” Tony granted magnanimously.

Steve opened his eyes and kissed the edges of Tony’s smile. He tested his thighs, shifted his feet, and rose in one controlled motion, bringing Tony up with him. Startled, Tony scrambled at his shoulders, but then wrapped his legs around Steve’s hips and indulged him in another long kiss.

“I don’t think I can carry you down the fire escape, or I wouldn’t let you go at all,” Steve said regretfully, letting go of the more-than-appealing image of carrying Tony straight back to the couch and laying him down there, his feet never touching the floor. His imagination readily supplied him with a conflicting image of tripping on the narrow stairs and sending them both over the edge to the pavement ten stories below.

“Next time,” Tony offered, leaving a final kiss at the juncture of Steve’s jaw and ear. He rocked his hips once to rub the length of his denim-clad erection against Steve’s. It was almost enough to put Steve back on his knees, and damn the cold. He took a slow breath and let Tony down, stepping deliberately away as soon as Tony was steady on his feet. Tony swept the basket up and led the way back down the stairs. His hips swayed enticingly on each step, and it had to be on purpose, but Steve wasn’t going to complain over the view.

They slid back through the window and Tony rolled his shoulders, making a happy sound at the influx of heat. Steve wanted to move back into his space, wrap his arms around Tony’s waist and lean his head on Tony’s shoulders, but he felt less sure in the bright glow of the interior lights. Keeping his hands reluctantly to himself, Steve followed Tony into the kitchen. Tony opened the fridge and pulled out two custard dishes. He shouldered the door closed and set them on the counter.

“Few things are better to light on fire than sugar,” he said with a roguish smile, fitting a canister into a small torch. “Ever used a culinary torch?”

Steve had, several times, but he took in Tony’s expression, affected big innocent eyes, and shook his head. Tony snorted a short laugh, but played along. He waved Steve over, and wrapped easily around his back. Their bodies fit snuggly together, Tony’s shoulders broad enough for him reach around Steve easily, his hips fitting just below the curve of Steve’s ass, and it was too much not to arch back into them.

“Let me demonstrate this very complicated and mysterious culinary tool,” Tony said, doing his best to put on his teacher voice, but his breath came a little too sharp to pull it off. Steve held onto the torch while Tony sprinkled sugar over the custard, deliberately shifting his weight until Tony put a forestalling hand on his hip. “This is a _very dangerous_ tool, but don’t worry,” Tony teased, “I’m a professional.” 

“I’m sure I’m in excellent hands,” Steve replied, pleased at how even his voice was even as Tony’s free hand came to rest low on his stomach.

Tony lit the torch and directed Steve’s hand so it rested an inch over the layer of sugar. He held it there until the sugar began to bubble, and then moved their hands in a quick circular pattern to melt the rest of the sugar into a perfectly browned candy shell.

“Easy,” he breathed, clicking the torch off and turning his head to mouth at the base of Steve’s neck. “Want to try the other one?”

“I don’t know if I’m experience enough to handle such a dangerous, complicated tool,” Steve said, leaning over to nuzzle at Tony’s jawline. “Maybe you should show me how one more time.”

Letting out a shaky breath, Tony rested his forehead briefly on Steve’s shoulder and bit him through his shirt. “You’re driving me mad, I swear. I’m not supposed to want you this much.”

Steve caught the strange wording, but he let it go. Setting the torch on the counter, he turned around and got his arms around Tony’s waist again, stretching his hands out to cup his very well formed ass. Kissing him once, Steve lifted him off his feet again. He pressed his nose under Tony’s chin and nipped gently at his skin.

“I’m all yours tonight, just tell me where you want me,” Steve said. His stomach gave a nervous tremble and he wanted to say that maybe he was all Tony’s for more than just the night, but that was scarily too soon to be planning a second date and in the list of things they’d talked about, long-term dating hadn’t come up.

“Couch,” Tony told him breathlessly, “Couch is closest.”

Steve started moving for the living room, but Tony groaned and shifted his weight to say, “Bedroom. Bedroom has… things. Hallway to the left.” He curled around Steve’s neck as they moved so he could nip at his ear. “I want you to fuck me,” he said, making Steve stumble as they passed into the hallway. “I’m going to get on my knees, and I want you to fuck me so hard that I can’t stand tomorrow.”

“ _God,_ ” Steve gasped, rolling them into a wall and yanking Tony’s head up to seal his filthy mouth shut. He thrust helplessly against Tony’s body, hating every stitch of clothing in between them.

“Could you fuck me standing up?” Tony asked, breaking away from him.

“I… yes,” Steve moaned. “Yes.” His legs were already starting to shake, but if Tony wanted it, he would make it work.

“Bedroom is at the end of the hall,” Tony told him. He shifted to lock his ankles together and added, “Mush!”

Steve pulled away from the wall, but he smacked Tony’s ass in mild rebuke. Steve froze for a moment, startled at himself, but Tony let out a loud, high moan, jerking in ready approval.

“Your hands are perfect for that,” Tony told him, capturing his face to kiss him again. Steve held on to Tony with one hand and felt along the wall with the other, moving cautiously down the length of the hallway. The bedroom door was open, but Steve still knocked them into the frame once going through. Tony made a soft noise, but hardly seemed to notice, impressive legs flexing and relaxing to rock them together in a tantalizing rhythm.

Steve dropped him onto a king-sized bed that consumed most of the bedroom and leaned over him to pepper kisses and bites down his neck. Tony held onto the back of his neck with one hand and ran the other down his spine, dragging his nails back up. Steve arched into the touch and broke away just long enough to struggle out of his shirt, only managing to get the first two buttons undone before he got frustrated and just yanked it over his head. Tony sat up to help him out of his undershirt and instantly set his lips to Steve’s stomach.

Stroking through Tony’s hair, Steve relaxed into the comfortable sensation of Tony’s goatee on his skin, the brush of Tony’s fingertips over his sides. When Tony hooked his fingers in Steve’s belt and pulled, Steve obligingly stepped back to undo the buckle. He dropped his pants and boxers in one motion and followed the momentum to his knees. It put him at the perfect height to open Tony’s pants and slide them down his thighs, momentarily trapping them together so Tony made a frustrated noise as he tried to open his legs. Steve let him be frustrated for a minute, taking his time kissing up his thighs before nuzzling his check into Tony’s hard cock.

Tony’s hips jolted off the bed and he cursed softly. Steve let his eyes slide closed and opened his mouth so Tony’s cockhead pushed between his lips. He held Tony’s hips down when he tried to thrust up and made leisurely progress down the shaft and back up, shaking his head gently side-to-side and listening to Tony’s abbreviated curses. Above him, Tony shifted on the bed to remove his shirt and then stretched to fumble at the bedside table. Steve wasn’t surprised when he felt a small bottle land on the bed beside his arm, but he ignored it for several long minutes, slowly working Tony’s pants down until he had to pull away to get his shoes off. He tossed the whole bundle into a corner, stood to toe his own shoes off, and kicked his clothing out of the way.

Legs freed, Tony moved further onto the bed and opened his legs in blatant invitation. He reached down to stroke himself in long, lazy pulls, eyes locked onto Steve’s in the semi-darkness. Steve watched him, resisting the urge to touch himself, just taking in the sleek lines of Tony’s surprisingly smooth chest tapering down narrow hips and muscular legs.

“Just going to stand there all night?” Tony asked, voice low in the darkness.

“I might,” Steve said, but he was already moving forward, grabbing the bottle of lubricant as he crawled onto the bed and directly between Tony’s thighs. He stroked the back of his hand down the back of Tony’s leg and nestled his fingers into the V of his pelvis, running his thumbs around the base of Tony’s cock in an easy massage that made Tony thrust up against his hands.

“I want to see if you can hold me against the wall, Steve, so stop teasing me,” Tony ordered. He stole the bottle of lube and popped it open with one calloused thumb, shifting in the bed to get his hips off the mattress. He poured the lube directly onto himself, flinching briefly at the cold, but Steve stopped him before he could get his fingers past the tight ring of muscle.

“Next time,” Steve told him, dragging his hand away and biting into his raised calf. “Next time I’ll watch you do that to yourself.”

If Tony had any protests to ‘next time,’ he kept them to himself. Grabbing his thighs, he pulled his knees up to his chest in a remarkable display of flexibility, and gave Steve a challenging look.

Steve never was one to back down from a challenge.

~*~

His internal alarm woke him at five in the morning. Steve fumbled for his phone, expecting it to go off at any minute, but he couldn’t find it on the on the bedside table. Blinking blearily, he pulled his head out of the pillow and stared at the unfamiliar shape of the table. It took him several sluggish seconds to remember that he wasn’t in his bed, and he spent several happy minutes remembering exactly why. Next to him, Tony snored softly, laying on his back with one hand an inch away from Steve’s arm, and the other flung out across the bed. They were using less than half of the bed together, except for Tony’s errant arm and leg claiming the rest.

Steve rolled over carefully and looked down at him. The room was too dark to make out his features, but Steve could just barely detect the steady rise and fall of his chest. He resisted the urge to reach out and touch him, burying his hands under his cheek to keep them from wandering. The clock had been ticking steadily toward midnight by the time they finally collapsed on the bed, Steve’s legs shaking too badly to hold them up, both of them laughing between gasped breaths. Tony could probably use a few more hours of sleep.

The faint jingle of his alarm from the floor finally drove him out of the bed. He slipped out from under the sheets as quietly as possible, grabbed his pants and bundled them up to muffle the alarm, retreating from the room so he didn’t wake Tony up. Steve paused in the hallway to silence his alarm and slip his boxers and pants on. He padded out into the living room shirtless, taking in the comparative disarray of the apartment as he went. He righted a lamp he didn’t remember knocking over, straightened several picture frames and folded the blanket to drape over the back of the couch. He put the whole basket of cheese and fruit in the fridge for Tony to dispense with as he liked later, and paused to smile down at the untouched crème brulee. The finished custard looked sad after more than five hours on the counter, and the un-torched custard had soaked up all the sugar. He didn’t think either would be salvageable up to Tony’s expectations, but he put them in the fridge anyway and cleaned the wine glasses.

Leaning back against the counter, Steve flipped through his phone notifications. He had an email from his colorist looking for an update on their Wednesday deadline that Steve was most likely not going to make. He replied with a quick few lines that he would get what he had complete delivered and finish the last few pages by Friday. Bucky had restrained himself to only two texts the night before, but even as Steve opened them to start reading, another came in.

_Punk, i kno ur awake. U better txt me in 5 mins, or i am coming to find u._

Steve considered letting the five minutes pass, but he had a feeling that Bucky would be on Tony’s doorstep ten minutes after that, and he didn’t feel like spending his ‘morning after’ fending off his best friend.

_I’m awake, and still alive. No one has kidnapped me or locked me in a basement._

_That’s what u’d say if u were a kidnapper who locked my friend in a basement,_ Bucky pointed out.

 _True,_ Steve conceded, _but would I leave the blue light on in the chem lab?_ He typed back, seemingly nonsense, but actually Bucky’s code phrase to know he was talking to Steve and not someone who’d stolen his phone. Steve didn’t know exactly what had prompted Bucky to demand the code phrase, and Bucky wouldn’t tell him, but he tried to be patient and just use it where it was needed. If it helped Bucky feel safer, Steve couldn’t protest.

_How was ur date?_

Steve hesitated, glancing at the hallway that lead back to the master bedroom. He typed in and deleted three responses before settling on, _Nice_.

_NICE?! U dog. On a first date?_

Steve’s face went immediately hot and he glared at the phone as if Bucky could see him.

_Im coming over. U want doughnuts or muffins?_

_Pick fast or u get whatever I get_ , he added when Steve didn’t respond immediately.

_I’m still at Tony’s._

The phone was silent and still in his hands for several minutes. Steve could imagine Bucky’s face going serious, expression closing down into that blank mask he wore when he was evaluating, strategizing. Steve hated that face.

_Wow, ok. C U 2nite?_

_I’ll text you when I get home,_ Steve promised.

_k._

Steve waited a moment to see if Bucky would text anything else, but shut off the display and tucked the phone back into his pocket when nothing came through. His stomach snarled at him in a reminder that it was fifteen minutes past his usual breakfast time and he looked at the fridge uncertainly. He hadn’t exactly been given permission to help himself to Tony’s food, and even after the night they’d had he didn’t feel comfortable rifling through Tony’s cupboards.

Sneaking back into the room, Steve retrieved the rest of his clothes and dressed in the hall. He took the interior stairs down to Carbonell’s kitchen, planning on slipping out the window and jogging down to the coffee shop three blocks north for caffeine and a few breakfast sandwiches. He was surprised to find the light on when he opened the door into the kitchen, and paused briefly to think over whether or not Tony had turned it off, but he was fairly sure that he had.

“Mr. Stark, you’re up earl-!” a man started, appearing from the walk-in fridge. He jumped when he saw Steve, his armful of packages going flying. Steve managed to catch two, but hastily moved out of the way when the unassuming man in the apron brought his fists up.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Steve said quickly, setting aside the packages of what looked like dried fruit. He held his hands up. “Sorry, I didn’t think anyone would be down here – I was just going out for breakfast.”

The man eyed him carefully, eyes sweeping over his rumpled shirt and creased jeans. He straightened up, tugging on his vest to resettle his clothing.

“You must be Mr. Stark’s date,” he said finally, “I am the restaurant manager, Edwin Jarvis.” He held a hand out and Steve introduced himself, shaking it firmly.

“I’m really sorry about startling you,” Steve said earnestly. He knelt down and helped pick up the packages and containers, setting them on the prep station counter.

“Quite alright,” Jarvis said, but he still looked a little shaken. He put a hand to his chest. “I hadn’t expected. Well.” He cleared his throat and straightened his back. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Steve said, holding down a laugh at the ridiculous scenario. “I’m going to run out for some coffee and breakfast sandwiches. Can I bring you something back?”

“For goodness’ sake, you’re in a kitchen, man,” Jarvis told him, looking severely disappointed. “One of the best stocked kitchens in town, in fact. You are not going out for processed cheese and greasy sausage on a frozen bun!” He pointed to the fridge. “Grab the eggs and I’ll get a pan warming.”

Steve wanted to protest, but Jarvis had already turned his back and marched over to the hanging rack of pans. He shook his head helplessly, but opened the walk-in fridge and retrieved a pallet of eggs, grabbing milk and cheese while he was there. Jarvis nodded approvingly at his choices and they set to getting breakfast on the stove.

“I can do this,” Steve offered, “I don’t want to interrupt whatever you were doing before I took a few years off your life.”

“You _can_ cook?” Jarvis asked, arching one eyebrow. His voice was smooth with a soft English accent, and it made the potential insult soft enough that Steve only smiled.

“Six months in Dr. Banner’s evening classes.”

“Well,” Jarvis said, affecting an air of suspicion, “I guess it will do…”

~*~

It was almost six by the time he made it back up the stairs with a tray laden down with a pair of plates, a carafe of orange juice, and a tiny vase with a sprig of lavender in an inch of water. The roses he’d brought over the night before were arranged on Tony’s table, and Steve considering stopping to replace the lavender with one of the unopened buds, but he left it alone.

He was half expecting Tony to still be asleep, but the other man was sitting up in bed, the sheet pulled over his lap, staring off in the direction of the closed blinds. He hadn’t noticed Steve walking in, and Steve took a moment to just look at him. A faint gray light had finally won out over the heavy curtains, casting irregular patches of weak light around the room. One long stripe rested across Tony’s chest while his face was still in shadow. Steve tried to commit the image to memory and wished he had a pencil and pad with him.

“Morning,” Steve greeted after a moment when it became obvious that Tony was lost in his own world.

Tony jumped, eyes going wide. He turned sharply and just blinked at Steve like he didn’t recognize him. Steve felt a moment’s uncertainty and wondered if he’d overstepped some unspoken boundary of one-night stands by still being in the house when Tony woke.

“I thought you’d left,” Tony said finally.

Steve shook his head. “Just went to get some breakfast. I think I scared your restaurant manager three-quarters to death when I opened the kitchen door.” He set the tray on the bed and pulled the checkered towel off with a flourish. Jarvis had been unimpressed with his attempt at plating and had tried to rescue it with a scattering of fresh herbs around the edge of the plate, but it was not a pretty dish. Tony frowned at it suspiciously.

“What is that?”

“Eggs in a basket,” Steve explained. He kicked his shoes off and crawled into the bed, careful not to disturb the tray too much.

“That is… fried bread with a fried egg in the center, smothered in cheese and avocado. It’s a heartattack in a bun.”

“No,” Steve said patiently, “It’s eggs in a basket. My mom made it growing up. Just try it.”

“I can smell the butter on it from here,” Tony protested, “Did you use a whole pound of it? What has Bruce been _teaching_ you?”

“Not how to make PB&J with a blowtorch,” Steve said. He cut into one piece of bread, spilling the yolk to soak into the break. Tony winced, but Steve sectioned off a bite and held it out to him with one hand under the fork to catch any drops. “Try it.”

“Are you trying to assassinate me? There are easier ways.”

Steve gave him the same look he turned on Bucky when his friend was being stubborn or immature. “Try. It.”

Tony opened his mouth with obvious reluctance and Steve fed him the bite, leaning forward to kiss a smear of yellow yolk off the corner of his lip. Tony turned into him to capture another kiss, chewed the bite with a grimace that slowly changed to thoughtful.

“It’s horrible,” he announced, but he snagged the fork from Steve and grabbed his plate. “I just don’t like food to go to waste,” he added just in case Steve thought he might actually like it.

Steve chuckled, but grabbed his own plate and put his back to the headboard. They ate in a companionable silence, and Steve didn’t say a word when Tony used his last square of bread to soak up the spilled yolk.

“I could get used to this, I guess,” Tony decided off-handedly. He froze and flickered a quick glance at Steve.

“So could I,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice even and not get his hopes up. They’d had one date, and one night of fantastic sex. That didn’t mean they were getting married. He put his plate down on the tray, realized he’d forgotten napkins and turned to grab a tissue from the bedside table. A familiar shape caught his attention as he was turning away and he wiped his hands before grabbing a corner of the comic book and tugging it out from under an engineering magazine.

“Oh, God!” Steve moaned, staring at the cover. “Tell me you were just using this to prop up your other books and you haven’t actually _read_ it?” He turned to Tony in entreaty, holding the first issue of _The Midnight Avenger_ up so Tony could see it.

“Are you kidding?” Tony snatched the comic and held it protectively to his chest. “This is the comic that made me fall in love with you. Seriously, after reading this I wanted to have your babies and I didn’t even know your name, _S. Rogers_.”

“Give that back,” Steve demanded, “It needs to be burned.”

“You touch my comic, and I swear to Tesla, I will bite your fingers off.” Tony snapped his teeth together to show he was serious, glaring so darkly that Steve thought he might actually physically defend the comic.

“It’s so bad, why do you want it?” he asked, aware that it sounded like he was whining. “I was still in art school, and what was I thinking _‘The Midnight Avenger’_?” Steve shuddered dramatically. It was the first comic he’d sold and he’d been over the moon at the limited print. He still had a copy framed at home, but Tony didn’t need to know that. The fact that it was framed meant that he didn’t have to open it, so he was saved from wanting to track down and burn every copy through lack of exposure.

“It is not bad, and don’t say mean things about my baby, I will cut you, just try me. Ask Bruce. I put peroxide in his pomade.”

Steve dragged a hand down his face with a groan and hid behind it.

Tony rustled around on the bed, moving the tray to the floor, and then poked at Steve’s chest. “C’mere,” he ordered, getting onto his knees to turn the lamp on, and then flopping to his stomach with his head at the foot of the bed. He nudged his toes into Steve’s side and said again, “Come _here_.”

Sighing melodramatically, Steve shifted so he could lay on his stomach at Tony’s side. Tony carefully opened the comic like it was a relic that might fall apart at the touch of human hands. “We are going to read this comic, and I am going to tell you all the reasons why it’s amazing, and you are not going to argue, so help me.”

Steve laughed, but he propped himself up on the elbows and said, “Fine, teach away.”

It was, hands-down, the best morning Steve had ever spent lounging in bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end for now!
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